Classical (drive theory):  A drive is a want.  Symptoms that are caused by unconscious wants are symptoms that satisfy a need.  The primary mode of action of psychoanalysis is for patients to recognize their own design in their symptoms, and thus to take responsibility for them.
         "Drives" that depersonalized or used other people were, by their nature, something to be ashamed of.  This is why the superego was unrecognized for the first 25 years of Freud's work.  This was the rationale for "naming" interpretations as used by the early analyst.  Patients were caught in the act, their dodges exposed.  the early analyst refused to be swayed by rationalizations and denials (it took boldness and courage), but first he had to win the patient's commitment (you were to rely on the transference until it became a resistance).
         Clients are expected to cling to infantile wishes and unconsciously resist change.  The goal is to convince them of this, called "making the unconscious" conscious or, later, "analyzing wishes."  This is thought to unblock frozen motives, freeing the client to "make conscious choices."  Code phrase is "resistance analysis."
         Freud's diagnostic emphasis:  the analyst determined the patient's reality (e.g., interpretations were confirmed by subsequent associations, not by the patient).  The patient's subjective reality was easily discounted.  This is why the big point of intersubjectivism, constructionism, and postmodernism is that the patient's subjective experience counts.
        Object relations:  The key way to distinguish the alternative theories, object relations and "relational," from drive theory, is that they are concerned with love, not sex, especially with the need for parental love, which is far removed from the damning up and discharge mechanics of libido theory.  Needs for mothering and to maintain self-esteem are felt to be fundamentally legitimate.
         So what most distinguishes object relations theory is the endorsement of repressed wishes.  The choice that the Freudian patient was to make is the choice of sobriety, of mature self-containment, of the delay of gratification.  "Delay" has little meaning in relation to love, especially maternal love, and self-esteem maintenance.  Patients are seen as "object seeking" to escape or repair internal objects.
         This approach is not about catching people in devious efforts at gratification so that they can gain more control over their lives, but to make gratification available, either by making patients feel safer or by making them aware of new possibilities.  The therapist really feels he or she is reparenting.
         "Hard" object relations theorists (Klein, Fairbairn, Kernberg) stress interpretation even more than do classical theorists, but about content ("naming" interpretations) rather than resistance or defense.  "Soft" theorists are the most revisionistic.  They want to protect clients from interpretation (Winnicott's "uninterpretation" and holding); also "empathy" is Kohut's code word for interpretive forbearance.  Clients not only do not resist, but want to grow (Kohut), get better , and unconsciously "supervise," even "plan" treatment (Weiss).  Control-Mastery belongs here even though it is wish-based and is the most purposivistic of all current theories, since the wishes are all benign and concern object seeking.  Hard to classify:  Mahler, Guntrip, Jacobson.